The CBS vice presidential debate moderators, Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, tried to tie Hurricane Helene to “climate change” and pressured both Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz to endorse government climate action. But “the notion that this is a man-made or -enhanced or -caused weather event is just without a foundation,” Milloy explained.
[Doug] In what other sport do the referees where the uniform of one of the teams?
Milloy, a Senior E&E Institute Legal Fellow and former Trump EPA Transition Team Member, insisted that there’s “been no increase in strong hurricanes. There's been no increase in the frequency of hurricanes. The sort of storm that hit the Big Bend of Florida has happened before.” Indeed, as of Jan. 2023, data indicated major hurricanes were becoming less frequent.
In terms of “observational data,” Milloy continued, the theory that “emissions have somehow warmed the ocean water is completely faulty, because it's physically impossible for the atmosphere to warm the ocean. So it's impossible for emissions to warm the ocean.” While Helene “may be a record weather event … that's not really going to be unexpected, because we've been through a pretty extraordinary past year, which is not explainable by emissions. It was an El Nino year. There are other factors.” Helene wasn’t caused or intensified by human actions.
Alarmists assert storms are “made more likely by climate change. I have no idea what they're talking about,” Milloy told me. “Storms have always happened. They always will happen. The ocean water … has warmed recently. But once again, the atmosphere cannot warm the ocean.” Rather, “the primary warmer of the ocean is the sun, and the other is [that] water can be warmed from beneath. That's probably how El Nino has developed. So both of these things are natural, have nothing to do with humans.”
Milloy cited an “ironic” article he found from last year saying people were moving to Asheville, NC, which has since been devastated by Helene, “because they thought it would be … safe climate wise. And of course, you know, climate is a ridiculous reason to do anything. They should have been thinking about the weather.” After all, “those mountains get storms,” Milloy pointed out, “it's a flood-prone area. And this time they got a really big one, and no one was ready for it, because I guess they're imagining that emissions are a problem.”
When you make decisions based on what climate alarmists say, disaster is sure to follow; not a single climate doom prophecy has come true in many decades.
Trump’s VP pick Sen. JD Vance showed last night he doesn’t know as much as a professional about climate, Milloy added, but “I thought he did a fine job yesterday in terms of carbon dioxide. Yes, of course, carbon dioxide is plant food. And, you know, despite all the hysteria of the past, how long has it been — 36 years now — about emissions … ‘wreaking havoc on the planet’. I mean, there's really no scientific evidence of that.”
It has been repeatedly illustrated that “the climate models don't work. That's been proven again this past year,” Milloy concluded. “No climate alarmist prediction has ever come true. They can't demonstrate that emissions are really having any effects on anything other than maybe they're helping the planet get greener, which means there's more life.” Obviously, “we need plant growth, because that's where we get our food from.”
[Doug] If you buy the full CO2 causation theory, it still doesn't follow that stricter rules on Americans that drive economic activity like drilling, mining and manufacturing to places without those restrictions have any positive effect on global emissions or climate.